Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken

Technically this film is leagues away from the quality of films later produced by Takahata and Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli. Still it's a great little film with more depth than is first apparent. It's a shame Takahata encountered such resistance and lack of backing from the studio when making this film. It could have been so much more. At one point still frames replace the animation becuase they ran over budget in production! A landmark in anime nontheless.

It has great animation and characters, but doesn't fully beat the "Japanese Disney" feel that anime had trouble escaping in its beginning years. There's quite a few terrible singing scenes that seemed tolerable at first but got old really fast and broke the pacing. There are times where this became an absolute chore to watch. There are other times where this became an absolute joy to watch. Where this movie really shines is the action sequences. They might not be anything you haven't seen today, but they are ahead of its time. The opening sequence and the final 25 minutes are stunning in this regard. ... I also enjoyed watching the characters and all their schemes. In particular I enjoyed Hilda's plot line. Horus is a bit one-note and standard as a protagonist. I feel like to the average person this movie won't make much of an impression but hardcore anime fans, especially Ghibli fans as this marks the first collaboration between Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, should check it out at least for the history and impact.

Well, this is a really really old video and let’s say that for its time, it might have been very high class but now, it feels like it lacks a lot. The animation is low quality and the voices feel forced and scripted.

Horus seems to not think about what he is about to do, his heart being in the right place but his head just doesn’t seem to be happening there. He was made to be the purest of the pure but they made him come out as a rather young child, younger then he should be. Other characters randomly sing and makes it ... feel like we are in a old Disney movie.

The animation is really old and they cut corners constantly. They reuse clips a lot and also jump around without any explanation on why they are except that they are travelling. Both people and animals look rather blotchy and not a lot of detail. In order to not animate some of the faces, they are covered in thick bushes of hair from eyebrows and beards.

The script sounds cheesy in the English version, where the voice actors feel as though they are just reading lines. It’s rather narrative and descriptive in the beginning and then loses a lot of that as the story goes on, not explaining enough when it needs to later on. It feels like it should have been much shorter. They did do a good job matching the voices though so it does get some props for that.